Frankfurt; Saturday, 05 September, 2020

I hadn’t realised the night before that the hotel had only re-opened after its Covid closure that lunchtime and I was amongst the first guests to check-in. The realisation was made clear when I headed down for breakfast at about 9am to be told that Breakfast wasn’t available as they hadn’t yet worked out their plan for running it post-Covid, instead they would issue me with a refund on check-out, so instead I popped over the road to the Hauptbahnhof and brought a couple of croissants and a juice from a kiosk on the concourse.

After a coffee and breakfast back in my room I headed out and my first stop of the morning was down to the river to join a cruise along the Main. The company I was using offers three cruises. One leaves from their landing stage and heads out west, past the former Westhaven before returning. The second tour heads out east, into and round the Osthaven before returning. As the ships do one tour after the other the third option is to get a joint ticket and stay on the boat, so that’s what I had done and spent a very pleasant two hours in the sun sailing up and down the Main.

Disembarking back onto dry land it was a short walk partway back to the Römer to the Frankfurt Historical Museum, which I spent some time looking around.

Museum completed I headed up into the Römerberg and had a late lunch out on the square before wandering back over to the former open-air archaeological gardens and now a museum under a building. Sadly, due to the pandemic it wasn’t possible at the time to go down into the ruins, but all the shutters were up so it was possible to look over the balconies and take in the ruins from above.

From the ruins it was a short walk over to the cathedral where I had a look round the inside, before heading into the Cathedral museum. Compared to Aachen the previous week this is a much smaller and less bejewelled museum with just a small collection of robes and a couple of chalices, but it’s located within a quite cloister off of the cathedral and a nice space to spend a few minutes wandering around.

After taking in the cathedral and museum I went for a bit more of a wander through the old town before heading back to my hotel to freshen up for my evening river cruise.

Along with the daytime cruises the company I used also offers a Skyline tour that sets off just as the sun sets and so you are able to see the skyline of the city with the sunset and then in the dark. It makes for a very different view of Frankfurt.

The tour ended up mooring up slightly further along the river bank than where it set off from so rather than walking back through the Römerberg I walked up past the Cathedral and caught the tram back towards the station, where I stopped for a late evening Bratwurst before heading back over to my hotel and turning in for the night.